In Lucas’s handwriting were six words:
For whatever you choose next.
I looked out through the window toward the lake.
The future no longer felt like an unanswered question waiting for someone else to solve. It was simply there, open and imperfect, asking me to walk into it without a promise, without a story written by frightened parents, and without the belief that love had to arrive at seventeen to be real.
Some evenings, I still sat beneath the old football bleachers.
I went there alone at first. Later, Lucas joined me. We brought coffee and talked about his father, his mother, the cottage, and all the things people leave unsaid because they are afraid the truth will change everything.
The truth had changed everything.
But not always in the way we feared.
Sometimes it changed a life by ending the waiting.
Sometimes it changed a family by giving sorrow somewhere to rest.
